We'll Meet Again (14 page)

Then came the news that, without even a declaration of war, Germany had invaded Russia.

This could mean only one thing. Hitler believed he could not make a successful invasion of Britain. What our Prime Minister had said of our airmen was true, that “never in the history of human conflict had so many owed so much to so few.” They had saved the world and now the full fury of Hitler’s attack was not turned against us only. We shared it with the Russians.

The time was passing—and still Jowan had not come home.

I
WAS DEEPLY SHOCKED
when I found that the man and woman in the boat were Jacques and his sister. Who would not have been, faced with such a situation so suddenly, and in the middle of the night at that!

I had never wanted to see Jacques again. He had disappointed me, humiliated me by bringing his objectionable Mimi right into the house with what I could only call insolent nonchalance, as though it were the most ordinary conduct for one mistress to be presented to another in such a casual manner. The arrogance of the man was unacceptable and I had wanted to cast off all memory of it forever.

And then, there he was!

I was thankful when he went away, but I quite liked Simone. She was very different from Jacques—quite modest, in fact. Of course, Jacques had been the artist living in the Latin Quarter, thinking he was a Degas, Manet, or Monet, or that little one with the short legs, Toulouse-Lautrec, I think. Simone was more of a country girl, very eager to please, and Tom Yeo said she was a good worker and he was glad to have her.

I struck up quite a friendship with her; she seemed a little lonely and I did not see why my relationship with her brother should affect ours.

In spite of the war and having to see my poor sister grieving for a lover who, I believed, would never come back, I was not displeased with life. I enjoyed being with the recuperating soldiers. They had a special feeling for me, I knew. They liked to chatter in a jolly way, pretending to fall in love with me. It was all very lighthearted and pleasant.

But I could not stop worrying about Violetta. She tried to be cheerful but she did not deceive me. It was there all the time … a cloud to spoil the complete enjoyment of the fun. And fun there was in the silly little things of everyday life. I wished above everything that Jowan Jermyn would come home—or if that was asking too much, that we might at least know what had happened to him. If he had been killed, it would be better for her to know it. Then perhaps she could begin to forget. I thought Gordon Lewyth was in love with her in his way. I never understood the man. Violetta would say that was because he had not been attracted by me, I thought there was something wrong with him. Well, she did say things like that to me, and often there was some truth in them.

But Gordon was a strange man. There was some hidden depth there. After all, his mother was a murderess and now in an asylum. I knew he visited her frequently and must have been constantly reminded of the terrible things that had happened at Tregarland. But I did think he cared for Violetta, and I was sure he would be a very faithful husband. But she loved Jowan, and I supposed would go on doing so throughout her life—even though he was lost forever somewhere over there.

I had changed a little. Experience does change one; the bigger the experience, the greater the change. I was not the same woman who blithely gave up her home, her husband, and child to go off with a French artist. I sometimes thought of Dermot as he was when I first met him in Germany. He never seemed quite the same afterwards, and it was certainly eerie when I first came to Tregarland. No wonder, with all that was going on in the house! Violetta tried to tell me that Dermot’s death was not due to me. He fell from his horse. They said he had been drinking too much. Yes, but why? Poor Dermot! He had been so crippled that it is possible that he took his own life, though some speculated that it had been an accident. I tell myself it was. It makes me feel better. And then there is my baby.

Tristan is such a darling. He is beginning to like me at last. At first he turned to Violetta and Nanny Crabtree when I wanted to pick him up. It is different now. When he calls me Mummy, I want to hug him and cry: “I’m going to make up for leaving you, my darling. I will, I will!”

So, in spite of the war and my twinges of conscience, which I have to admit grew less as time passed, I could have enjoyed life if Violetta could have been her old self, though recently I had discovered a new interest.

I liked him from the moment I saw him. He is rather tall, not conventionally good-looking, but I like him better for that, and he has an authoritative manner which appeals to me.

The day after he came to inspect us, I met him on the cliffs.

“It’s Mrs. Tregarland, isn’t it?” he said.

“And you are Captain Brent.”

“I recognized you at once,” he went on.

“So you should,” I retorted. “It was only yesterday.”

We laughed.

“What a wonderful old place the Priory is!” he went on.

“Tregarland is as good.”

“Your home, of course.”

“Yes. They are the two big houses around here.”

“And your husband …?”

“I am a widow. It is Mr. Gordon Lewyth who looks after the place. He always did when my husband was alive. He’s very good at it and is quite a personage around here. He runs the Home Guard. I think in a way he would like to join the army but the place would fall to pieces if he did.”

“Well, he is doing the best job possible at home.”

“We’re thinking of using some of the rooms at Tregarland to extend the convalescent home. Then we could take in more at a time.”

“That’s an excellent idea, and you and the other young ladies will be in charge, I suppose.”

“Well, Mrs. Jermyn had the idea in the first place, and Tregarland would be a sort of extension. It would be rather like that, I suppose.”

“And your sister is the fiancée of the heir of the Priory?”

“That’s so.”

“It’s a wonderful job you are doing. All of you work very hard, I’m sure. It is interesting that you are all related.”

“In a way … though Gretchen isn’t really. She’s married to Edward.”

It was so easy to talk to him that I found myself telling him the story of Edward’s being brought out of Belgium by my mother when he was a baby. He listened intently. Then I went on to the incident in the Bavarian forest when we had all been brought face to face with the Nazi menace.

“That was like an introductory chapter,” he said. “It set the scene for the drama to come.”

“Yes, it was exactly like that. Though we didn’t see how important it was at the time.”

“Few saw the significance of it and those who did were not able to do anything about it.”

He turned to me, dispelling the gloom.

“Well, this is a great pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Tregarland.”

“I do not find it at all unpleasant meeting you, Captain Brent,” I replied.

We laughed a great deal during that morning and when we were about to part he said: “Do you often go out for these walks?”

“Not often. There is usually too much to do. I have a little boy and I like to spend some time with him. He has the best nanny in the world. She was mine and Violetta’s at one time and my mother thought so highly of her that she acquired her for Tristan.”

“Tristan?” he repeated.

“You will like this! My mother was a devotee of the opera. So my sister is Violetta and I am Dorabella, and I thought we should keep the tradition, hence Tristan. If he had been a girl, he would have been Isolde.”

He laughed at that. It was a very happy interlude.

I said to him: “By the way, what do you think of Jowan Jermyn’s chances of getting home? My sister is engaged to him, you know.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Well, it is not impossible.”

“But … remote?”

“I suppose I should say that.”

“It’s better to face the truth.”

“Always.”

“I must go,” I said.

“It has been such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Tregarland.”

“That is what you said when we met.”

“It bears repetition and I repeat it with emphasis.”

We said goodbye—and that was the first time. After that our meetings were frequent. They were not exactly arranged, but we somehow contrived to meet in the same place at the same time.

Violetta would have said I should have seen the way things were going. But that was how I am. I had married Dermot in haste and it had not taken me long to discover what a mistake that was. Then there was the affair with Jacques, from which I had but recently emerged. Violetta had been there to help me out of that, so I should have been wary; but when people like myself embark on an adventure, they are carried along by their belief in what the outcome will be—and that is, of course, the way they want it to go—and they sometimes find themselves in awkward predicaments.

However, my meetings with Captain Brent were the highlights of those dark days. At first, there were those seemingly accidental meetings. Later, of course, it was different.

There was so much to talk about. He was interested in everyone and everything. Nothing seemed too trivial. All the people who lived thereabouts, even the maids. Nothing was too insignificant to interest him.

We laughed a great deal. That was one of the reasons why we enjoyed each other’s company so much. It was a light-hearted relationship and even things which would not ordinarily be amusing seemed so with him.

He even asked about Nanny Crabtree and Tristan and Hildegarde. Then Charley and Bert. I had never known anyone so interested in people. It was all a lot of fun and irresistible to me.

He was living in a small furnished cottage on the edge of East Poldown. He told me the army had taken it for a year and it was for the use of personnel who had to be in the neighborhood for any length of time. He was not sure how long he would be there, and indeed there were times when he was called away.

I suppose uncertainty does give a touch of urgency to a relationship, and it develops more quickly than it might otherwise.

He was looked after by his batman, Joe Gummer, who did housework and cooking and looked after the captain with a rare efficiency. He was a Cockney with a perpetual grin and a habit of winking exaggeratedly to let one know when he was making a joke, which was frequently. There was no doubt in my mind that he was devoted to James Brent. I found it all very amusing.

The cottage was small—two bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, and two rooms and a kitchen below. It was rather sparsely furnished and had obviously been prepared for letting to holiday makers in peacetime. It had an impersonal look.

The garden was pleasant. It ran down to the river. One could look southwards and see the ancient bridge which separated the two Poldowns and yet feel isolated. Rhododendrons, azaleas, and buddleia grew prolifically. I became fond of the place.

Those days were full of excitement for me. I took every opportunity to go into Poldown. I would take the car round by the road which meant I had to pass Riverside Cottage. I would look in and Joe would give me the information, “Sir’s off out, Miss. I’ll tell him you called. That’ll please him. How are you, Miss? I’ve been run off me plates of meat this morning.” I had to get used to his Cockney rhyming slang and discovered that his “plates of meat” were his feet. He told me his trouble and strife (his wife) had been bombed in her place in Bow.

“Kitchen ceiling come down. What a mess! It was a job to clear it up. She said: Did that Hitler think she was his housemaid? Pity he couldn’t clear up his own mess.”

His conversation was always accompanied by those winks, to which I had now become accustomed, and bursts of laughter. I always felt the better for having seen him.

Yes, I did enjoy those days. I had made a habit of spending an hour or so with Tristan in the mornings before I left for the Priory and again after I returned home. I would sit with the children and read them a story while Nanny Crabtree watched, nodding with pleasure. I was sure she was thinking that this was how a mother should behave (not going off gallivanting, with foreigners), for, of course, Nanny Crabtree had never accepted that amnesia story.

“Loss of memory, my foot,” she had said. “That Dorabella’s not the sort to go losing her memory. No, she’ll be up to something.” And Violetta had said: “We must tell Nanny the truth. She’ll be terribly shocked, but she’ll forgive you, and in any case, she won’t rest until she knows what really did happen.”

Then there was Simone. I met her frequently about the estate. She had turned out to be different from the quiet, earnest girl who had arrived in England with her one desire to fight for her country.

She never seemed to want to talk about Jacques. Well, nor did I, so that was no hardship. She had seen very little of him during their childhood, and then she had gone to live with the aunt in the country. She was light-hearted and frivolous in a way—not unlike myself.

She told me about one of the men on the farm who was pursuing her. He was a typical Cornishman, Daniel Killick by name, and she made me laugh by her efforts to reproduce his accent, and was really funny about their attempts to communicate—her English being a little limited and her accent not helping, the Cornish expressions were incomprehensible to her.

We giggled a good deal together, and, I must say, it was a relief at that time, for the gloom of war could be very depressing.

Of course, she wanted to know about me. I told her about Dermot and she was naturally aware of my affair with Jacques. She said he had always had love affairs and he had stayed with me longer than with most and, after all, it was I who had walked out on him.

Very soon I was telling her about Captain Brent.

“He is charming, that one,” she said. “Like my poor Daniel? Oh, no!
Quelle difference!
Tell me. I am all nose.”

“Ears,” I corrected her and we giggled. I told her of my meeting with the captain on the cliffs and how our friendship had progressed from there.

Life was full of interest at that time. Even those boring Germans had turned to the Russians, which everyone thought was a “good thing” for us, if not for the Russians.